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Disability: Depression Diaries and Unconditional Love

Ana's Note: This is a new series as part of the Health deconstructions. It exists partly because sharing overly personal stuff online is kind of what I do, and partly because a number of you have kindly written in saying that when it comes to depression, I Am Not Alone.

One of the interesting things about my current bout with depression is how utterly self-loathing it is.

That doesn't mean I automatically think everyone on earth is better than me (counter-intuitively enough), but it does mean I don't think particularly highly of myself right now. And that attitude can blossom into a really terrifying spiral really quickly.
For example: after a long day of feeling like total suck, it seems very natural for my brain to latch onto the fear that Loved Ones -- such as Husband -- who by definition do not suck, will eventually and inevitably recognize my suck and leave me alone forever.

And I recognize -- because another strange side-effect of my depression is that I can logically know the feelings are irrational and medicinally-induced and yet I still can't shake them -- where these feelings are coming from. I feel like total suck because I'm not contributing to the household by cleaning or cooking. I feel like total suck because I'm not getting up out of bed every morning and heading in to work like good, hard-working people do. I feel like total suck because I'm not creating things of meaningful value and I'm instead arsing around in bed, watching television, playing video games, being bloggy, and trying to force myself to eat more so that my spinal incision will finally heal. Geez, what a hard life you have there, Marie Antoinette, says the Depression.

So when Husband comes home from a long day of Work and immediately starts contributing to the household economy by Cooking and Doing Dishes, the fear sets in and sets in hard.

Because Husband demonstrably does not suck. I demonstrably do. This is highly obvious for anyone willing to look closely enough at the situation. And Husband, being the bright clever person that he is, will eventually look up from the Fog of Love and notice that his wife is demonstrably useless. And then he will do the logical thing and immediately and irretrievably leave forever, because that's exactly how marriages always dissolve in real life and I will have lost something of immeasurable value.

Cue internal, heart-wrenching sobs.

But wait! That part you can understand. That part you would expect. Depression, after all, isn't called that because it's Happy Rainbow Unicorn Farts all the time.

No, the really weird part comes two minutes later, when the wait, hang on, I'm only feeling this way because I'm depressed defense mechanism kicks in. Because at that point, what you want most in the world is to fly into Husband's arms and ask for reassurances. You still love me, right? You'll always love me, right? You don't mind that I'm total suck, right? But then your brain logically points out that, no, you only feel like total suck because of depression, and Husband doesn't feel that way about you, and therefore you can't go to him and ask for reassurances because then you'll be bringing him down from his Happy Mood into your Sad Mood and then you really will be total suck.

You see? You were worried that you were Total Suck for not being an equal contributor. Now you can also worry that you are Total Suck for thinking that way and bringing down everyone, including yourself, into sad depression land.

At this point, you -- or at least I -- start surreptitiously and intensely examining Husband for any little indication that everything is Right (or that something is Wrong!) in order to achieve that necessary reassurance without bringing up the topic and sending everyone into sad depression land. And eventually, Husband will do or say something that could be interpreted to be something other than marital bliss and the fear will be confirmed: you've lost him forever and it's all your fault for being sad. Or something.

Depression is different, or so I'm told, for everyone. But my experience so far has left me in helpless shock at how easily it replicates itself into a growing critical mass of awful. Logic and reason and You're only feeling this way because you're depressed can be absorbed into the depression as effortlessly as water into the dry Texas land without healing a single angry crack in the earth. Frighteningly, depression can and will replicate itself based on the very rules and principles of logic: You are total suck for the following list of reasons. Arguing against it very often just plain doesn't work even if you know what is happening in that moment.

There's not a pithy closing statement here because I have no advice for how to deal with depression. I'm flabbergasted that something like this is even "dealable" with over long periods of time. But if you aren't depressed, but know someone who is, go take a moment to reassure them that you love them, no matter what. Telling them they aren't total suck won't work; the depression has logic and reason and copious footnotes on its side. Telling them that you'll love them forever even if they are total suck is the only thing that the logic can't defeat because logic is helpless in the face of tautologies.

So go tell your loved one that your unconditional love for them is unconditional. Now.

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comments:

I am so familiar with "I know this completely irrational emotion is completely irrational, but...", though anxiety is what I struggle with, not depression. (Though my anxiety can cause depression, for extra fun.) I have some success with the practice of stopping the anxiety messages in their tracks, but only when I'm basically doing all right. Which means I must be employed in a job that involves dealing with the public - face to face - on a regular basis. Why that stabilizes me, I don't know. I just know it does a better job of it than drugs. And I still have to tell anxiety messages to stop far more frequently than I'd like.

I can't tell if I've posted here before or not, but I just had to for the entire, the entire, paragraph on the really weird part. Holy crap on toast, that is exactly it. That is absolutely the self-isolating part of depression: not that I'm not worthy of love (which is its own thing), but that I have depression, and seeking reassurance for something demonstrably irrational would be burdensome and terrible of me; better to Bootstraps It Up.

I frequently say this about my anxiety, actually: "The worst part is, I'm smart." Meaning, I intellectually know better, I've read the studies and the stories and I can think and everything, and it doesn't matter one goddamn bit.

My favourite (haha!) part is where I convince myself that not only should I not whine for reassurance about something that is clearly nothing and that I am probably only making up anyway because depression isn't like a *real* illness and I should get over it... But, in fact, the correct thing to do is to become more distant and not tell anyone what is going on, slowly and as gently ad possibly extract myself from the lives of those poor people who are convinced for no good reason that they love and care about me. After all, they'd be better off without me! No matter what they claim! Ideally I should actually become more of a jerk so that people will be less sad about it when I kill myself.

Yeah, that sounds familiar. Not the specific patterns, but the escalating spiral. Tip: if you get to the stage where the spiral always ends in, 'Well, I could die and that would solve everything,' take it seriously.

With me it focused around my son rather than my husband. I was convinced that:

a) Anything I did right as a parent was nothing to feel good about, just the bare minimum that anyone would do, and probably a shortcut round proper parenting. It said nothing about what kind of person I was, just about what parenting was.

b) Any sign that my son was thriving was entirely to his credit, not mine. He gained weight at a healthy rate? Well, he was a good nurser. He was responsive and alert? Well, yeah, he was just like that. He was sweet and friendly? Heck, nothing to do with me, he'd been born well-adjusted. The idea that my parenting might have had a role in maintaining his health and happiness quite literally didn't occur to me until after I was better. As long as I was depressed, they only said something about him, nothing about me.

c) Anything I failed to do as a parent - which basically meant failing to be a one-woman Baby Genius Three Ring CIrcus every second my son was awake - did say something about what kind of person I was. Something bad.

d) Any sign that my son loved me was nothing more than human infant programming. At first it was 'He doesn't love me, he just loves being fed and I'm the one who does it.' Then, when he got old enough to act delighted when he saw me, it was 'Babies are wired to bond with whatever adult they spend most time with no matter what kind of person the adult is; when he's outgrown it, he'll hate me.'

e) Any predictions about the future were based on very selective memories of my own family. Basically it ran thus: 'Sometimes I have been angry with my mother. (To which I now say, from a cured perspective: well, duh. Show me a family where a parent and child have never had a moment of being pissed off with each other.) Therefore my son will be angry with me.' Now, I still think he'll be angry with me sometimes - heck, he's not always best pleased with me nowadays when I refuse a second helping of raisins or interrupt Alphablocks. People who live closely sometimes piss each other off. But I believed that my son's final and permanent attitude towards me would be anger, that this was not an inevitable element of our relationship but its inevitable conclusion. He only thought he loved me now because he hadn't matured into hating me, yet.

f) I was being entirely logical, and any less suicide-friendly interpretation of things was just pathetic wishful thinking.

So, y'know, you're not alone. Depression's an evil little fucker.

Here's one to think about: total suck or not, you are actually engaging and grappling with your depression. You are trying to keep on top of it, trying to stay aware of it, trying to keep the part of you that's sane and healthy, the part of you that's you, alive. And that - that is the difference between those who make it and those who don't.

As long as you keep groping towards the light, it doesn't matter whether you can see it or not. You're moving towards it, and some day you will.

" I feel like total suck because I'm not getting up out of bed every morning and heading in to work like good, hard-working people do. I feel like total suck because I'm not creating things of meaningful value and I'm instead arsing around in bed,"

Ana, that is it exactly. But exactly! And the tautology problem is right on. It's like meta-suck ... The proof that I suck is feeling like I suck.

Except that you are creating something of value (for us, anyway), and have a very good reason for feeling this way. I've felt this way for no "good" reason (several "bad" ones) for twenty-odd years, on and, occasionally, off. I suppose like any disability one adapts and gets by. But, man, it would be nice not to have it.

Depizan, that is interesting about working with people face to face. I and my lived one have had that experience. Like, I can rally and surface out of the Well by interacting with other people sometimes, even though when I am in the Well I can't imagine doing that.

Gah, I just re-read my first post and it sounds like I'm saying "my depression's 'realer' than yours, poor me" ... That's not what I meant, but it came out all wrong! What I meant was what Kit said more lucidly, i.e. that you seem to be fighting the good fight, and that from the outside the sinister logic looks like the Gordian knot that it is, which is difficult to see from the inside of it. Sorry if my post was triggering or inconsiderate, due to my bad typing.

I sort of personify my depression. I don't consider it part of me, really, so much as a little interloping demon that hangs out in my head and tries to make me miserable. I call it the gargoyle. It is... pretty good at its job. My absolute least favorite part of the whole experience is how, after it's succeeded in getting me to feel like worthless garbage, it then turns it around on me: "What the hell are you so sad about? Other people have REAL problems, you know." Then it starts listing off people I know who have these real problems and I should be grateful and stop feeling sorry for myself.

Sigh.

So yeah, it is kind of the worst. I'm so sorry you are having to cope with this. One thing that helped me when I was at my worst (at age 18, when my depression was so severe I temporarily dropped out of high school on medical leave) was every day I would write down things that I did. Some days the list would just be something like "1) made a sandwich. 2) ate the sandwich." But it helped, somehow, to be able to look down and see evidence that I'd done SOMETHING besides take up space in the world. It can definitely be tough to acknowledge that the things you have done have value, so I gave myself permission not to worry about that kind of thing, and just acknowledge that I'd done something. Anyway, it was a helpful exercise for me, but I can't say whether it is appropriate or practical for your circumstances. Just wanted to pass it along since it helped me, so maybe it will help someone else.

And for the record, you are absolutely "creating things of meaningful value;" these blogs! Take it from me, a virtual stranger who has no reason to lie!

Jules, if it's any comfort, I wrote my post, put it up, then had to go edit it because I realised I'd left some unfortunate implications in too. It's a dreadfully touchy subject. :-)

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One thing that helped me when I was at my worst (at age 18, when my depression was so severe I temporarily dropped out of high school on medical leave) was every day I would write down things that I did. Some days the list would just be something like "1) made a sandwich. 2) ate the sandwich." But it helped, somehow, to be able to look down and see evidence that I'd done SOMETHING besides take up space in the world.

You know, that's actually very similar to a technique Cognitive Behavioural Therapy recommends. You note down what you've done soon after doing it, then give it points out of ten for how much 'pleasure' it gave you, and also how much of a sense of 'mastery' - that is, how much it made you feel competent, sensible, in control, good at something, or otherwise like a person who could cope with stuff. You have to do it right away because depression eats memories of both those feelings pretty fast, but it can help to have a list of things you've done and numbers suggesting that you got something out of them.

So, y'know, kudos, because it looks like you independently evolved your own treatment method that professional shrinks would admire and that's pretty cool, and also, well, there's that technique recommended for anyone who wants to try it. CBT isn't magic because nothing is when it comes to depression, but it has a lot of merits; if you're smart it can seem insultingly simple, but if you actually do the techniques they do often work. They're basically about cutting through the disaster-logic chain reactions, which can be a very necessary thing sometimes. David Burns's book Feeling Good is a popular introduction to it...

But if you aren't depressed, but know someone who is, go take a moment to reassure them that you love them, no matter what. Telling them they aren't total suck won't work; the depression has logic and reason and copious footnotes on its side. Telling them that you'll love them forever even if they are total suck is the only thing that the logic can't defeat because logic is helpless in the face of tautologies.

Thank you for writing this. My partner has been signed off work with depression and anxiety for the past six months, and I've been really struggling to know how to reassure him that I still love him and am not going to leave just because he's ill - nothing I say or do about how wonderful I still think he is seems to get through. Your advice in your last paragraph is so perfect - such a simple thing, but it just hadn't occurred to me to think of it that way (and I now feel slightly ashamed for not figuring that out...). So, thank you for explaining it in such a simple, accessible way. Off to tell my partner how much I love him and always will, right now.

This post sparked a post over on my own blog about my own feelings on Depression. I still maintain I don't have it, mostly because every time I feel like total shit and hate myself, it's in direct relation to something real and tangible: bullying, for example, or lingering feelings of shame from being bullied, or (in this case) my friends getting hurt because I made a bad decision. But then I think maybe I'm deluding myself, maybe I really need to be medicated. Only to me, personally (not judging anyone else, this is a personal hangup about myself based on some awful past experiences), giving up and going on medication is like the epitome of failure, meaning I've sunk to the lowest position possible. So thinking maybe I need to be medicated is like saying I need to give up on life, which is a very depressed thing to think, which means maybe I _am_ depressed, which means....

I'm pretty sure I have an anxiety disorder instead. I should probably be on anxiety meds, which I can admit without experiencing the same spiral. Only I can't get them because of my phobia of therapists stemming from the same trauma that caused my extreme feelings about antidepressants and mood stabilizers. Mostly what I end up doing is saying, yes, I feel like shit. I'm going to feel like shit no matter what. But I can't let that stop me from getting things done. And then hey, it's like six days later and I feel betterish. That's probably not healthy either but at some point I just have to say, fuck it, screw healthy, it works for me and it's a little better than my previous coping strategies so I'm going to keep doing it until I find another way to improve.

PS: Don't take advice from me on coping with mental disorders, I'm a wreck >.>I just figured I'd share my own brand of wreckage in case it interests anyone.

It's nice to read this thread. Depression (and anxiety) are so bloody isolating.

I have learned to ask for the reassurance. If I have a day where Everything Is Impossible And Terrible, I will say to my boyfriend (probably multiple times over the day) some variation on "You still love me when I'm depressed?", or I will apologize for being depressed (usually I say things in words that are not safe-spacey, so I've edited for the board). And he will reassure me. It helps.

I've been the support-person for depression as well. And when someone I care about is depressed, being given the chance to offer constant reassurances is good for me too, because saying "Of course I still love you" is something that I can do, and usually there's not a ton I can do.

When I'm depressed, and in a situation where I have the energy to do something, but it seems pointless, I try very, very hard to think about "What would not-depressed Smilodon do in this situation?" and, if she would do it, then I do it. Normally that's "I should go hang out with my friends but All the Terrible Forever, so I'll stay home." When some part of me knows that dealing with people helps and makes it better. If I can make myself go, I try to go. I can't always do it, and I sometimes don't have the energy to even try, but sometimes it helps.

I have been struggling to write a comment to this post because I remember that when I was in the depths of depression I found people discussing how they "got over" their depressions to be totally undermining to me. I just read them as more evidence that I sucked since other people seemed to manage to do great work (or at least be dramatically and theatrically interesting) while depressed.

Like Ana I have no pithy closer to my post. Give unconditional love where one can. Give friendship and support where one can. Share information and never presume that because something worked for you it will work for someone else.

I just read them as more evidence that I sucked since other people seemed to manage to do great work (or at least be dramatically and theatrically interesting) while depressed.

Well, my experience was that the only way I 'got over' my depression was that I got prescribed some medication that worked. Nothing else helped. I mean, I later got to see a therapist who helped deal with the fact that I was also upset, but that wasn't depression. Depression is something else. And sometimes it's just too physical a problem to be gotten over with anything mental...

You're right. I didn't mean to imply that things that worked for me will work for anyone else, if that's what it sounded like I apologize. I know that's not the way depression works. I like reading about what did work for other people, because I hate feeling powerless against it, but I don't mean to say that any tactic will work for other people. Depression has common threads, but it's specific to each person.

I wouldn't say I "got over" my depression in any way, actually. Eventually, it went away. I don't think there was any action on the part of my concious brain that made it go.

I have depression, or ADD, or more probably both, and I don't have health insurance (or money to spare) until November. I can't focus. And the less I'm doing, the less I can focus -- the more I keep busy, the smoother my life goes. My family (let's be specific: my dad, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia) taught me to regard my inability to focus and lack of accomplishment as character flaws, and so I'm hard-pressed not to think of myself as lazy an incompetent, despite the fact that on an intellectual level, I know better.

And I have to admit, it really does relax the stress quite a bit to simply be able to say all that "out loud."

Dont be ashamed. I've learned the hard way in the past cople of months that almost nothing about depression is intuitive. You'd think that "you aren't total suck!" would be more helpful than "ok, even if you ARE, then..." but it's oddly not. (At least not for me.)

The depression has a way of saying, "they love you, of course they'd lie about you not sucking. But we know the truth." *sigh*

Ana, thank you for writing this - it's hard to read, because it is so close to some of the things I think as well. This is a thing of value: I can look and see someone going through the same loops I travel daily, and saying "this is not right." Thanks.

You see? You were worried that you were Total Suck for not being an equal contributor. Now you can also worry that you are Total Suck for thinking that way and bringing down everyone, including yourself, into sad depression land.

It's like some horrible scifi evil that corrupts all the systems and uses your power and strengths against you.

I guess the only way out is to communicate "Something is wrong and I need to fix it and I need help to fix it..." but communicating anything specific can be really hard.

This post is doing a lot of good for me because everyone time I surf on over here I will be reminded to Fix My Suck by making endless phone calls to finally get counseling. I can't do it in one sitting, but since I tend to obsessively check your page, maybe I can do it by the end of the week.

I'm relieved (as awful as that sounds) to find out that so many of your guys's experiences and emotions match so exactly to my own. In my group of friends, everyone either (a) is not dealing with depression, or (b) is, and does not wish to reveal/talk about it - which is a completely valid and personal decision for them, and I wouldn't second-guess it or say that they were obligated to tell me; it just leaves me feeling alone and isolated, like there's no one else to commiserate with or who could understand all the twisted ways in which my own emotions and thoughts seem like they're deliberately preying on me.

Depression isn't just having off days, or bad moods, or being sad for 'good' reasons – for me, it’s coming home from work every night for months with no energy, not wanting to do anything. It’s telling myself six times a day “you really need to finish X” and every time, having no way to make myself just get up and do it even though X only takes a few minutes; and the longer it sits, the worse I feel and the harder it is to force myself to do anything. It’s my husband asking me “what’s wrong?” every night, and me never having a good answer. It's trying not to tell my husband anything's wrong at all, so he won't figure out what a raw deal he got when he married me.

It’s latching on to little things and snowballing them to believe the worst about myself – that I am ugly, stupid, worthless, and shouldn’t have been born. Literally, shouldn’t have been born: my grandmother let slip that my parents had been expecting a boy, “Michael Alexander”, and even though they never did anything to make me think they didn’t want or love me, I started to believe that I had to be as quiet, unassuming, and helpful as possible to prevent people from realizing I’d stolen someone else’s chance to be alive and developed a severe social anxiety that lasted from age 13 up until after I finished college (which is finally starting to abate a bit). I’m not sure I’ll ever be done dealing with the effects that had on me.

It’s also feeling like there’s something inherently wrong with my core being, if I need to be medicated just to reach some level of ‘normal’. And at the same time, feeling like the whole problem should be over and done with because I have medicine to take, and anything that isn’t already fixed is my own fault for being – again – ugly, stupid and worthless. I’m worried that my prescription is losing effectiveness, and afraid to bring it up yet again to my PCP for I-don’t-know-what-reason except that I feel like I’m not living up to the bootstraps ideal if I keep asking for drugs to fix me. I talk to my counselor about all the surface problems and about ways to improve communication with other people, but I keep brushing off what the depression is doing to me so I don't sound whiny and lazy.

Ana -- I've been trying for over half an hour now to put into words just how much your blog has helped and taught me since I found it a few months ago. Skipping over several pages of increasingly confusing explanations: thank you. You're fantastic.

This post is doing a lot of good for me because everyone time I surf on over here I will be reminded to Fix My Suck by making endless phone calls to finally get counseling. I can't do it in one sitting, but since I tend to obsessively check your page, maybe I can do it by the end of the week.

FYI, I only needed to make two phone calls to get the help I needed.

The first was to the local crisis hotline. The second was to the volunteer-run counseling program they recommended. The second phone call got me to the cell phone that the program uses as their official phone number. I left a message. They called me back the next day, when the person handling the phone call that week checked the messages and made any follow-up calls needed.

The prospect of endless phone calls can be overwhelming. But the needed phone calls may not actually be endless.

Mine is PMDD, not full-time depression, but it's still not fun. I get into the spiral of self-loathing, with an added side of feeling like a fraud. If my demonstrably non-sucky friends are willing to hang out with demonstrably sucky me, it's either because (a) they are just so kind and selfless that they put up with me out of the goodness of their hearts, despite my utter lack of redeeming qualities; or (b) I am somehow fooling them into thinking I have some redeeming qualities. I get into this mindset where I'm convinced that anyone who really knows me couldn't possibly like me, and therefore anyone who likes me doesn't really know me.

Yamikuronue- When I was on anti-anxiety meds, which segued into antidepressants, I got them from my GP. I don't know if your situation would allow that, or if your problems dealing with therapists also apply to medical professionals, but I suggest it because it might work as an end-run around your problems. The mental spiral DEFINITELY sounds like my anxiety attacks, though. Virtual hugs *or Hershey's Hugs* if you want them.

Thank you for reminding me that I need to send Allie internet hugs via email. Her archive still helps me cheer up on a monthly basis and she deserves non-pressure-y hugs.

I want to somehow respond to everyone in this thread but I've run out of words to say more than that everything people are saying is normal and it's not YOU, it's the DEPRESSION, and hang in there and {{hugs}}. So many hugs.

Yes to this. I find it hard to remember that things that in a normal situation would be me "procrastinating" are a perfectly valid coping mechanism, and that if constantly refreshing a page on the internet helps me deal, it's ok. The internet doesn't mind. Audiobooks are also really useful to distract myself, since it's hard to talk to myself when there's another voice in my head.

Considering how much trouble I have interacting with people when I'm at my worst, it's really quite bizarre. You'd think someone who can be reduced to not being sure how one should respond to "hello" (Anxiety brain: What does that MEAN!? AAAAAAAAAH!) should avoid public service jobs, not be helped by being in one. Explanations, I have none. (Other than that having a very structured interaction means anxiety brain has less to flip out over and one eventually gets a whole lot of positive interaction memories to draw on. I don't know.)

Of course, I doubt I'd have reached enough sanity to get my job without the meds, so I am by no means discounting meds. (And it's possible that if I'd stayed on the meds, I would be even more sane at present. But anxiety meds have the potential for digestive system side effects and I have Crohn's Disease. If I can get by without them, I will.)

I think this thread has been enormously helpful to me. There's stuff I've been doing lately (not dangerous, just odd) that I suspected was some kind of coping mechanism, and when I saw 'self-medicating' here I realised that it was a curiously close analogy. And with that framework in mind, I might be able to direct myself down more constructive paths.

"a similar route, which can be effective but does not carry the long term risks of physical or financial harm, would be to self-medicate with distraction like those horribly addictive facebook games that aren't even that much fun to play. Play farmville or mafia wars or whatever the cool kids are playing these days. Spend time collecting brightly coloured objects and arranging them into neat little rows."

Thank you for this - it makes me realize that my odd habits probably have the same reason behind them. Wanting to rearrange all the crayons in the box so they're in rainbow order, or tip all the books off the shelves to put them back alphabetically, or even the repetitious math doodles and counting primes. I'm guessing they probably are my ways to distract myself, but I never consciously looked at it that way before.

I'm grateful for any insight that increases my awareness of how I operate, and maybe I'll eventually be able to reconize those downwards slides for what they are earlier.

My absolute least favorite part of the whole experience is how, after it's succeeded in getting me to feel like worthless garbage, it then turns it around on me: "What the hell are you so sad about? Other people have REAL problems, you know." Then it starts listing off people I know who have these real problems and I should be grateful and stop feeling sorry for myself.

Yes Yes. This this this. And then I look at people with those problems and think, "They have *overcome* something! They are better and stronger! I have had no problems and am weak and worthless!"

Because evidently depression (or dysthymia) is *not* a problem to be overcome or struggled against that can make you stronger, or anything...

You'd think that "you aren't total suck!" would be more helpful than "ok, even if you ARE, then..." but it's oddly not. (At least not for me.)

Yes! I never want to hear "You aren't suck!" unless it comes with a bulletpointed list, including footnotes, to prove why I am not suck, and the giver has to basically do a thesis defense. ("Sure I got X degree. But I am unemployed, while you got Y degree and make Z dollars. What else you got?") Otherwise, I want a comprehensive list of "Ways to be better than suck." Which is also almost impossible, but slightly less so, I think?

I hope you're right. For me, they do seem endless: I have to call the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) attached to my insurance, and then answer a lot of questions that I always manage to screw up because they keep changing their minds about whether they want my husband's info (as the primary holder on our plan) or mine (as the patient). Then, they ask where I live, and spout out five random names.

Then, because five random names is not acceptable at face value, I have to *research* all five people, only to find out that all of them are either not accessible by public transit, or are social workers, not doctors (which might be fine, but shouldn't the EAP people tell me that in advance?!). Then, on the off chance any of the doctors look promising, I call them up, where I get their answering machine, where I leave a detailed message, and never hear from them again. If on the now-miniscule chance I have the spoons left, I might try again in a week, but I really don't need the process of *trying to get help* to make me feel *worse*, so it almost never gets that far.

Heya, Ana! From your comments about medication-induced depression on the other thread, I take it this is a new thing for you? Ow. Not a shiny new thing you want to have at all, nope. It's an old familiar enemy for me, and I'm sorry to hear you're suffering from it too. You're absolutely right about depression logic; it's insidious, invidious and self-reinforcing.

*hugs*

I enjoy reading your blog, and enjoy polite disagreement with you from time to time. I hope you don't find disagreement and debate stressful; if I fully agree with someone, I tend to feel I have nothing to say beyond "Me, too", and that's rarely worth posting.

One of the myriad issues I have from depression and the serious insecurity that goes with it is that it is very easy for me to mistake disagreement for a personal attack, which results in the unflattering characteristic of being willing to disagree with people, but not liking to be disagreed with/told I'm wrong. *sigh*

Sometimes depression can bring a certain amount of paranoia with it; it's all part of the "I suck at life" spiral. Depression logic leads to paranoia as follows: "I suck, therefore I am unlikeable, therefore no one likes me, therefore other people are only pretending to like me; since they are lying to me, they must be actively malicious and/or trying to take advantage of me."

Taking disagreement as a personal attack: I see this a *lot* with young, depressed people in fandom. Depression logic again: "You dislike/hate this thing I like that makes me happy. Therefore you dislike/hate *me*/think I am wrong/twisted/perverse for being the sort of person who could like this thing." Or alternatively, "You hate the only thing that makes me happy, therefore you wish it would go away, therefore you want to take away my happiness and leave me in a dark cloud of despair."

If you need help now and your employer's and insurance company's EAP isn't giving you the help you need, it may be worth calling a crisis hotline.

I never imagined that I'd call a crisis hotline. The idea of a phone number in an ad on a bus offering genuine help seemed absurd. But they did offer genuine help, and without the conflict of interest that comes with "assistance" from a for-profit insurance company trying to control costs.

Even if it just gets you to a social worker or trained volunteer who can support and advise you as you continue to navigate your insurance company's system, it may be worth it. Even if you still need a licensed medical doctor to prescribe medications, (as I do), a social worker or trained volunteer can still provide helpful counseling.

Ah, suck. Looks like the probability of Been Depressed My Entire Life Without Knowing It just went up a bunch, because that spiral sounds like a depressingly large quantity of my life. In my family of origin this degree of nonconfidence and displeasure with yourself was typical.

One thing I've noticed about the depression storms is that people being positive at them tends to send me deeper under. The spiral is often fed by significant amounts of rational evidence that if ______ goes according to historical pattern or is controlled by an outside force, then I will most likely fail, no matter how hard I try to succeed. ______ is often critical to my health, happiness, or prosperity. Of *course* I ended up being negative as armour -- when I try hoping and expecting better, I tend to get shot in the kneecaps by life.

I need to see what happens if, during a depression storm, someone tries agreeing about the rational negative stuff. Not "the universe hates you", but something like, "the cards have been terrible on all your turns, so yes, you will lose the game unless that changes now", or "yes, you should have started this project much earlier to be done on time." I think, bizarrely, that might actually help calm me down. I'm not sure *why* I think this, but I'm sure there's a reason.

I don't know if this will help when there's depression involved messing things up, but I do know that my partner and I have a deal where I can ask "Are we cool?" whenever I'm worried that things might be getting difficult between us. Of course, part of the deal is that I have to believe him if he says "yes". It's really nice to have a pattern on hand that I can use, when I need it, to ask for reassurance.

Depression is definitely an evil fucker. That self-loathing escalating spiral is so familiar to me. In my case, it mixes with a whole lot of anxiety and everything is terrible (the two are very clearly linked for me). It was a long time before I realized I was dealing with depression because I didn't realize that it wasn't normal to be that self-loathing. Every so often I think about trying to get treatment but I don't have insurance and I feel like the crisis hotlines are for if you're an imminent danger of harming yourself and I'm not actively there at this time (and telephones are a major anxiety trigger for me). Sometimes I really wonder what it would be like to not have the constant anxiety and depression.

I want to apologize if anyone thought I was implying that my "making a list of things I accomplished" thing "cured" me. It way, way didn't. It was one little thing that helped (in combination with medication and huge amounts of support from my mom) keep me from becoming totally suicidal during a couple of months when I was at the worst I ever got. I don't even think in terms of "getting over depression" because I don't believe that's a realistic possibility for me: I've had depression since I was a young child, it got much worse around puberty, hit my absolute low point around age 18, and clawed my way into a not-that-bad-by-my-standards equilibrium by my mid twenties. I have bad weeks and better ones. But it never totally goes away. I'm interested/cheered to know that for some people it does actually go away completely, but I sincerely doubt I am one of those people. It's been a lifelong illness for me; my aim is management, not a cure.

So I'm very sorry if my bringing up something that helped get me to a place where managing was a possibility was out of place or presumptuous or made anybody feel worse about their own progress or lack of progress. There's no one correct way of coping with depression. Every time I try to make this post it just turns into rambling and gets weird, so I am just going to stop now. I'm going to try to participate a little more, because I'm getting very irritated with my fear of posting online (come on self, this is ridiculous) (also I suspect it is a sign that my depression is secretly getting worse, just putting all its energy into agoraphobia-type things), and I feel like this is the place where I will be the safest, emotionally, to try to do that.

Yep, that's depression. In time it gets easier, but as far as I can tell it never gets /easy/, even after a decade or more.

Still, getting to the point that while your world is a constant turmoil of exhaustion and self-loathing has become /normal/, and it doesn't really slow you down at doing what you need to do... I guess that's something. I guess. It sure beats the phase /before/ you learn how to go through your daily routine with a straight face and just try to ignore the fact that your brain is constantly screaming at you.

The best and worst thing about being human, I suppose, is that anything can become normal.

I hate irrational, intrusive thoughts! And it keeps growing! I'm pretty sure the death phobia/spiritual anxiety/my sexuality (straight) just switching comes from. My mother has never been seriously depressed, so she's definitely one of the people that emphasizes the pulling yourself up by the bootstraps thing, which I'm not very good at because I need security and reassurance. All the time. About the same things (death, religion, God liking me--which kind of relates to death and religion and not dying young--and my fear of my attraction to guys just evaporating, even though I do have a lovely boyfriend). I'm on Prozac and not coping; it's 10 milligrams every morning and I turn into a sobbing mess at night.

The way I see it, if you're at a bad enough point that you'd consider calling a crisis line, then you're in enough pain to call.

I only called once so far. I felt really guilty about it when I called, because the only number I knew to call for help was the Kids Help Line (mental help crisis lines don't advertise on milk cartons), and I was too old to consider myself a "kid". As I discovered, when you call in tears, they don't yell at you and ask how old you are. We talked, and they eventually transfered me to a mental health crisis line. If I'd been thinking about it, I would have felt guilty again, because it wasn't a Capital C Crisis, it wasn't even a personal low. I just needed some advice about what to do, because I was supposed to go out with friends, and I couldn't go out in the state I was in. And I couldn't call to cancel because I couldn't stop crying. They checked to see how bad I was, but not to gauge if I was "crisisy" enough to call, just to see whether I was in immediate danger, which I wasn't. I live in a country with universal health care, so at the end of the call they asked if they could make an in-person appointment for later, which I did. It's good to hear Ursula's story that there's some systems in the US to help people without insurance - people shouldn't have to deal with this stuff alone.

Basically, in my experience, when you call a help line, they don't really fuss about whether your crisis is severe enough. They just try to figure out what you need and help you.

I suppose 'this is a big comment thread!' isn't a terribly useful contribution to the conversation.

So, hugs for everybody.

My fiance is having some troubles in this area, and the best I can ever do is offer to use my infinite moneys to help pay for the help she needs and shower her with incredibly corny and heartfelt rejected-from-a-bodice-ripper love dialogue.

It may take more than medication. Or a different medication (I was on Celexa). Or both. I was just barely sane enough to volunteer (and from there, get a job), but I still struggled not to have anxiety episodes* for the first year of work.

Anxiety and depression are rotten, rotten things. And definitely things one needs support to deal with.

*hugs* I kind of broke down and recorded a video for my boyfriend where I basically cried the whole time. He's the only one who's able to handle all this, which probably says a lot about him. It's the spiritual issues, the death fear, applying for jobs and completely irrational thoughts about my relationship, like "You need to leave him simply because you can't feel any emotion right now." And he's wonderful and all of this stinks.

So many hugs for everyone in the thread (and a bit of a boggle at how many there are in the commenting community here that are working with depression. Not that I'm exempt...) that want them.

Its always interesting how the smallest of things can be the trigger for self-loathing. It didn't even necessarily have to be something I did to set things off. Thankfully, I had someone to provide perspective, and a very supportive set of comments that I still look at when I feel doubt about me as a person, and whether I've managed to contribute anything of value.

It's still there, though. Just waiting for the next thing - get it licked in one place, and it comes back and undoes all of that work when something else triggers it in another place. And it's not like the prevailing culture here says that it's okay for someone to go see someone about these kinds of things - they always seen small compared to the very real problems playing themselves out elsewhere in my life and on the blogroll.

So I probably would tell you that I'm not depressed if you asked. But reading the thread says that sometimes, yes, yes I am.

and a bit of a boggle at how many there are in the commenting community here that are working with depression.

You noticed that too? I was thinking about that last night. Thoughts.

Maybe it's self-selection? Maybe people struggling with depression are more naturally drawn to "safe spaces" because there are fewer triggers there lying in wait? (And many of the triggers are carefully designated?)

Maybe it's under-diagnosed? I truly feel that depression is very poorly diagnosed, at least in the U.S., due to the whole "bootstraps!" social mentality. Maybe everyone struggles with it from time to time, but some much worse than others?

Maybe there's something in the water? Global warming? GET FOX MULDER IN HERE. (Except it's not fair, because the narrative always sets him up in advance to be right. We shouldn't be given the supernatural stuff first, it eliminates any feeling that Dana Scully might have a point, because we already know what happened. That's not fair.)

The one time I called, what I found was that, while I had people in my life whom I knew cared, the people in my life who cared did not necessarily know how to help, or what help was available.

The combination of caring and resources that the person on the other end of the phone call had made a big difference.

When I walked into a local clinic that happened to have "counseling" in its name, my father (who is always my best and most reliable support) was with me, because we'd recognized that I was, at that time, a wreck, and needed help, but we weren't sure what to do. When we got that phone number, he was sitting right by me as I made the call.

He wasn't threatened or hurt by me needing more help than he could give. He needed that help to, because he wanted to help me, but didn't have the right information available, for things like the volunteer counseling program I was directed to.

Which is another point. you don't have to be the person in crisis in order to call a crisis hotline. If someone you care about is in crisis, you can call for advice. There will be limits on what help they can give you. For example, they have to respect the privacy of the person you are concerned about, and they don't want an abuser to call to get advice for how to make their victim seem mentally ill, or the like. But even if you aren't the person who has the mental illness issues, they can direct you to a support group for people related to folks with problems, and otherwise help you deal with the way the crisis affects you.

But if you're helping someone, and have the right sort of relationship with them, then, like my father did, if you know the number, you can encourage them to call, and hold their hand as they call, and it can be a way to help them when you've run out of ways you can imagine to help.

(I don't remember exactly how things worked out, but I think my father may have used my cell phone, and made the call, talking to the people there first, explaining that he was with his adult daughter, who was having problems, and then handing the phone to me when he'd given them the basics. So that's another way you can help - talk to the person you want to help about the resource, make the phone call and explain the situation, and then hand the phone over so the person you're helping can explain what they can. My depression takes the "turns into a lump and doesn't do anything" form, rather than powerful negative emotion, so having someone to physically dial the phone for me made a difference.)

Yesterday I did the thing where I call my insurance to get a therapist, then call the therapist and find out the office is closed on Wednesday, and then realize that I did THE EXACT SAME THING a month ago. Well, it's Thursday now, time to try again.

Yesterday I did the thing where I call my insurance to get a therapist, then call the therapist and find out the office is closed on Wednesday, and then realize that I did THE EXACT SAME THING a month ago. Well, it's Thursday now, time to try again.

It's a strange thing.

On the one hand, we expect a therapist's office to be open during normal business hours. Because it is normal business hours.

On the other hand, during normal business hours, many of a therapist's clients have to work, so it makes sense for a therapist to keep their office open on evenings and weekends. A patient can't easily disrupt their work hours for regular appointments. Going to a therapist isn't like going to a regular doctor, which you do rarely when you're sick. You need to go on a regular schedule, such as weekly, in order to have effective treatment.

And on the third hand, therapists are still human, working most efficiently when they don't go beyond the standard of a 40 hour work-week, and needing time for themselves, to spend on self-care, family-care, rest and relaxation. Just like the rest of us.

So if you are heading into this situation, it may help to keep in mind that at good therapist will not necessarily have office hours during standard "business hours" because t hey care about their patients and know that the patients need to arrange treatment so they don't miss work.

If you miss too much work, you loose your job. If you loose your job, you loose your health insurance and income. If you loose your health insurance and income, you can't continue with much-needed treatment.

And a good therapist will also know that they can't just add more and more hours and still be effective. The efforts of the human brain and body have very real psychological and physical limits. You don't want to get therapy from someone who is falling asleep in the middle of your appointment, because they keep their office open during normal business hours (helping people who can make it during that time) and continuing to work throughout the evenings and weekends because they know that some patients can't manage normal business hours.

Therapists (doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, trained volunteers) are still workers. Needing good working conditions to do their best possible work.

I think the other thing that happened last time was that all the therapists who take Medicaid had a waiting list like 5 months long and/or just weren't taking new patients for the foreseeable future. It doesn't help to have theoretical access to care that isn't really available. But I'm totally sympathetic to therapists and doctors who can't get by on what Medicaid pays.

I think I've mentioned my own bouts of depression. I will also chime in on the obsessive thought patterns. Last year I came back from teaching English in Japan for about 19 months. This was a kind of job I had fought for and loved the entire time I was there, and leaving was wrenching. Trying to pick up the pieces of my life here while finding similar work has been an exercise in frustration (I am not a good interviewer) and I have been living with my parents the whole time. Add in being in Japan during the Tohaku earthquake and being close enough to fear fallout from the reactor, my emotions were a wreck.

I know what I SHOULD do. I should try to get back into graduate school and finish my Masters. However, leaving the program was one of the best things for me; I found out too late that it wasn't what I wanted. I was getting severe anxiety attacks, couldn't sleep, couldn't get myself to focus on studying. The thought of returning to that leaves me paralyzed. I keep getting stuck in the rut of 'you should do this you lazy idiot,' with 'but I was miserable and the thought of stepping back on campus makes me nauseous' and 'I miss the friends I made overseas' and 'but that was scary! REALLY SCARY!'

Add in a lack of insurance (working part time right now), my mother losing her old job last year (can't talk to her or confide in her) and my dad being bipolar, my grandmother going senile and I'm feeling rather cut-off.

Taking account of what is positive in your life isn't always good. What tends to happen (for me) is I start anticipating something good happening, and when it doesn't turn out the way I hope the spiral drags me down again. *sigh*

Also, any emotion you can muster, even a negative one, has the potential to be turned into something good.... well, good might not be the right word, productive, I suppose:

They think I'm worthless? I'll show those bastards! (Nevermind that I agree with them, those bastards need to be proven wrong and have it rubbed in their faces.)

The entire world is against me? Well fuck you world! I'm not going to let you win.

It can't possibly get any worse than this. So I guess all that's left is room for improvement.

It can't possibly get any worse than this, so nothing I can do can make it worse. I can try to make things better. I'll fail, as always, but it won't be any worse than it is now, because it can't get worse.

Not the best examples, and they're all very negative things that that won't sustain you in the long run, but getting though a given moment they might be of some help.

I know depression really well, 19 years since my earliest diagnoses (and only hospitalization, it was a busy season). Even knowing this, even almost two decades of experience of dealing with depression (with anxiety kicked in the last six years), I still can take weeks to identify a depressed episode. Despite knowing better, I still try to tough it out, or reason with myself or that pesky Jungian shadow with the bad attitude. Right now I imagine depression and anxiety as emotional hallucinations. With hallucinations, the sense information is created by the brain without any outside stimulus but appears as a distorted real thing. It won't go away on its own because it doesn't exist. It can't be dealt with as a normal object for the same reason. Same with depression. It's not connected to outside circumstances, or else it's a wildly distorted reaction to outside circumstances (I recall feeling like killing myself because I was assigned a trivial task I didn't want to do at work). The emotion comes first. Explanations for that feeling are more likely to be post facto rationalization, at least they were mostly in my case (i.e. I am depressed because...hmmm what could it be?). The real problem especially before diagnosis is that there isn't a common emotional reality, so unlike other hallucinations it's really easy to misidentify what's going on.

Two ways. One is getting real professional help if at all possible. Second is plod along, promise that today you won't do anything self-destructive (that may not be your problem, it was mine), and take it in whatever small chunks you need to get through (just get through this next day, hour, minute). Not a great help I know (from very personal experience) but it's the only way. Eventually you do learn somewhat to control the negative self-talk to a point. Professional help is the only way out in the long run. Even finding someone to love you won't truly stop the depression.

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